Fatism, Classism, Sexism: “People of Walmart”
One of my students first told me about People of Walmart, and even though my first reaction was that making fun of working class people is kind of not cool, a lot of my students insisted that no, it was funny, and I should check it out. Indeed, makes fun of lots of people, such as those who paint their cars as Clay Aiken tributes, or dye their hair to look like toupees, or dress like zebras.
On the other hand, it does make fun of fat people quite a bit, most often for wearing very tight clothing. (Of course if you are skinny and wearing tight clothing, it is described as “awesome.”) It also has used the term “back titty” more than once. (If there’s a word I can’t stand…) And occasionally there are posts where the entire point is “you are fat and your clothes are riding up“; conversely, there are posts where the fact that the person is fat is seemingly irrelevant.
This is another one of those things where I can’t decide if I’m being oversensitive or not sensitive enough. Is People of Walmart equal-opportunity free-for-all mockery, or are there undercurrents of fatism and classism (or even racism and sexism) that we should be pissed off about? And is it even okay to take pictures of strangers in public and post them online in the first place? Is Look at this Fucking Hipster equally bad? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Fashion, Fatism, Feminism, Humor, Question, Race & Ethnicity
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I say no -isms here.
I think it’s less the fact that they are dressed in tight clothing, but that they are dressed inappropriately for being in public. (Even SkinnyAwesome McStripperpants)
None of them would have been “interesting” enough for the blog if they were dressed like normal, sane people (of any size) in a public retail situation.
However, I am dubious about how cool it is to post pictures of strangers–although LATFH is hilarious.
I agree with Geans…I always feel awful gawking at unsuspecting people in pics. I shouldn’t be shocked, but how many truly awful and offending t-shirts can people wear?
I think a lot of things on this site are simply WTF observations? Bizarre and odd.
On the other hand, I lived in San Francisco for 9 years and was constantly amazed at the bizarreness of some people’s “attire”. But, I never saw any crazy offending t-shirts. I always smiled thinking how everyone else seemed so much more creative and free to do absolutely anything!
If anything, it’s just a lot of dirty hoosierism (sorry Indianans, us St. Louisans use your demonym disparagingly).
I’m an FA and have nothing against fat women in tight clothes, and some of those pictures are just… yikes.
I think the sexism, fatism, etc. comes in the comments, more than anything. But then again, that’s everywhere.
Peace,
Shannon
I haven’t seen every single picture on the site but it seems like fat or thin, if you’re dressed like an idiot you’re game for the site.
My favorite is the guy with the sleeves and sides cut off of his shirt so it’s essentially just a bib covering barely enough to be considered “wearing a shirt”.
I follow the blog, and yes, there are some times where the whole point of the post is that the person is fat. However, they really do attack everyone, so I can’t get too offended by it.
As for your last question, you are not entitled to you “right to privacy” when you’re in public. You go into public with the understanding that people will see you. If you don’t want to be seen, don’t leave the house. But the people submitting photos are well within their rights to take pictures, just as any photojournalist would.
I think the fact that it’s “people of Wal-Mart” specifically and not “crazy people who are dressed funny” makes it specifically directed at the working class, and therefore classist.
“Look at this Fucking Hipster” is not the same thing, and not in the least because hipsters are people who think that “ironic” classism/fatism/etc. is hilarious.
I’m of the opinion that making fun of any person for hir appearance is unacceptable. I think People of Walmart is especially horrible, as it purposefully targets a segment of the population that is already diminished in our collective conscience.
What it boils down to is that we live in a culture of snark, fueled in large part by teh internetz. I can think of a half a dozen extremely popular websites off the top of my head whose sole purpose is to draw attention to something and snark about it. It’s kind of sad, actually.
Some of the clothing is indeed bizarre, but (1) they don’t limit themselves to mocking people’s clothing choices, and (2) even the bizarrely-dressed need to shop (and the line separating the bizarre from the normal is largely subjective) so I don’t feel warm fuzzies about mocking them too viciously.
I agree with Sparkle Pants. The site is targeting poor people for laughs, and that is just wrong. The argument that they make fun of everyone does not diminish the hurt felt by individuals, especially when the comments relate to something they are unable to change.
I hate the judgmentalism of culture lately. It is particularly unforgivable when the people being mocked or shamed did not ask to be judged, as opposed to celebrity sites, which cover people who want to be in the public eye.
Isn’t this website about classist voyeurism? Wal-Mart is associated with working class people, red states, and mindless corporate capitalism. The real “problem” with the people in the photographs is that they “don’t know any better.” Their natural stupidity has not been ameliorated by any but the most basic public education, this site seems to assume, and therefore the subjects of these photographs don’t realize that their self-presentations are something no right-minded, educated person would want to see. This is the website the people in the pictures from “Look at this Fucking Hipster” probably have bookmarked.
My boyfriend was telling me about this site, and kind of laughing, and I said, “I can’t believe you would find that funny.” I was really pissed, though I was taking something else out on him. Still, I don’t think it’s ok to take pictures of people and then mock them on a Web site. It reminds me of that time someone stole pics from the Fatshionista LiveJournal community and posted them on another site to make fun of the fatties. Yes, they are within their rights to do that, but that doesn’t make it ok.
I disagree with the commenter above who says that people who leave the house looking like that are fair game. Legally they are, but I wish as a culture we could be kinder to one another than that. I do admit myself to occasional bemusement at other people’s clothing choices, but I’m not going to take pictures and post them on the internet. I could just as easily make an unfortunate choice one day and end up on that Web site.
I’m a fan of People of Wal Mart. Plenty of people in the poor area where I grew up looked/dressed like the people on there (“if you can read this the bitch fell off” shirts are quite popular). Way back when, my friends and I had a hobby called “mullet hunting”, where we basically took a picture of each other in front of a person with a mullet. We were bored and in high school. This is mullet hunting on a grand scale.
I grew up poor, as did most of my extended family and neighbors, and we wore clothing that mostly fit and didn’t have the words “bitch”, “fuck” or “shit” on it. I grew up in a trailer, as did most of my neighbors and relatives, so we were Actual Poor People, and yes, we absolutely made/make fun of people that look like they should be on the site.
The people who run the site specifically won’t post something if it’s just making fun of body size, disability, race or sex, which I like. I also like how if a bigger girl is wearing a shirt that says BITCHES AIN’T SHIT, they’ll generally bust on the shirt, not her size.
I think the site tries not to be classist, racist or blatantly anti-fat but the subtext is there just because of the Wal-Mart setting and it’s obvious in the comments. LATFH pokes fun at a more privileged group, so it seems innocuous, but I have a problem with the whole genre of “point-and-laugh” websites because they serve to enforce a conformist mentality.
Self-expression can be a source of empowerment and joy and I don’t want to participate in pissing on that, even if I personally think someone’s self-expression is unattractive or pretentious (as long as it’s not aggressively hostile).
As a very fat person beginning to have some fun with fashion, a la Fatshionista, I’m trying to be especially sensitive to this. If I’m going to let my fashion flag fly and expect not to be hassled for it, then it would be hypocritical to participate in bashing others’ choices.
There’s a forum post about People of Walmart over at Big Fat Blog, so I’m copying my response here:
I think there’s a lot more factors than just pure fat hate though. First of all, Wal-Mart has always been associated with the stereotype of the slovenly, low-income, “trailer park trash”/ “ghetto” shopper and anyone who fits that stereotype is ridiculed, not just fat people.
I think it’s more classism at work that fatism, but since classism is linked to fatism, it makes sense in a sick sort of way that there would be a lot of pictures of fat people who have made in the commenters’ eyes, questionable fashion choices.
I love People of Walmart. It reminds me of when I used to work there. X-D Granted, there have been a few pictures that seem to only make fun of the person’s weight, but I have found that a good 98% of the pictures are just flat-out funny and make fun of people for being clueless. I loved the couple in his-n-her WWE “Degeneration X” jackets. They weren’t fat at all, but they found a spot on the site because a couple who loves professional wrestling so much they buy matching jackets? That’s funny!
I don’t care how fat or how poor you are, or conversely, how thin or rich you are. There’s simply no excuse for walking out of your house in booty shorts and a sports bra! It’s tacky on anyone.
To me, it’s outright painful. I had been mocked and photographed in public, undoubtedly for a similar purpose and I still haven’t recovered from it. I don’t really care if they mock everyone else too, this is something that can pass on Family Guy, it being a cartoon and whatnot, but here these are real people and I don’t know if they’d be amused…
I think the site just rips on tacky people. Is “tackyism” a word? I don’t read the comments, but from time to time I do boggle at the pictures. I remember one of a young woman in a Nazi hoodie — who thinks that’s acceptable to wear anywhere? I’m uncomfortable ragging on people’s bodies or faces, but if you wear a Nazi sweatshirt or a T-shirt with a horrid phrase on it, I’m totally comfortable with ripping on the offensive clothing item.
For the record, most of the clientele at the two Wal-Marts I’ve visited most recently are well-dressed middle class folks. I didn’t see anyone in His’n’Hers DX jackets (wish I had!).
PS – When I lived in the rural South, the only 24-hour store was the Wal-Mart, and I used to run in there either on my way to or home from the gothic night at a club in the city. I could easily have wound up on that site, the way I was dressed. And I should have said that I don’t think it’s acceptable to pick on people for their bodies or faces; “uncomfortable with” wasn’t strong enough.
The mockery of people’s bodies and clothing choices does not give me warm fuzzies either, even without the classist undertones. And no – I don’t think it’s possible to separate a website that exists specifically for making fun of WalMart customers from classism.
It’s all epic fail; a person’s clothes, body and where they shop is none of our business, nor the person’s who took the photos. It’s also none of our collective business or place to comment on another person’s choice of clothes, size, choice of shopping place (unless those clothes are threatening/misogynist/racist/etc in some way). It is not OK to point and laugh at people. Full stop.
Being out in public doesn’t give anyone the right to take my photo and paste it anywhere, no matter what I’m wearing or doing. It’s MY image and if I see it somewhere and don’t want it posted, I’m well within my rights to tell whoever’s posting it to take it down asap.
Trabb’s Boy — how can you tell by looking at the subjects of peopleofwalmart.com how much money they have? Sparkle Pants, how do you know that they are “poor people” and “a segment of the population that is already diminished in our collective conscience” which is probably the most bullshit-filled sentence I have read today? Those two phrases don’t describe anything except how YOU feel about the folks depicted on the site.
Peopleofwalmart.com has a section in the FAQ that encourages individuals to contact them if their picture has been displayed and they want it taken down. Unless a person takes the time to read every hateful comment left about him, I’m not sure how it could ruin his life.
I have been reading “gofugyourself” blog for along time. It makes fun of what celebrities wear. I enjoy that and the people of walmart equally. Some people are just plain tacky! It transcends money! So how come gofugyourelf isn’t getting the same negative attention?
Some of the people are upset because “the site targets poor people”. Snobbery to automatically assume that those people are poor. People who make comments like that don’t realize that THEY are also stereotyping people and maybe need to come off their soapbox.
I don’t know. I understand how embarrassing it would be to find your picture posted all over the internet, but being made fun of for physical characteristics that you can’t control seems different to me than how you choose to dress.
Many, many, MANY of the people on the site dress in a way that is intentionally provocative and attention-seeking. They want to get a reaction from people.
Now, whether that justifies being photographed in public and posted on the web, I dunno. But Glamour started the trend with Dos and Don’ts (which always bugged me… that always seemed like a mockery of self-expression… I don’t know what the difference is between Glamour and PoW, but PoW seems to be more extreme examples of that).
Anyway, it would be less troublesome if they pixelated the victim’s face.
Peace,
Shannon
Ooh.
What MEP said.
There is no universal standard for tacky. Tackiness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
To me, it’s tacky to reinforce one’s own sense of superiority by laughing at people who don’t care to conform to some arbitrary standard of classiness.
I definitely think it’s more classism at work than it is size-ism, but sizeism and racism and classism are all intersectional: even though there are a multitude of reason why someone might be fat, it’s definitely a lot harder to lose weight effectively (if you care to) when the cheapest things to buy for your family are starchy, sugary, HFCS-filled fast/frozen foods.
Equally, I imagine it’s “White Trash” that shows up there more than anything else, given Walmart’s hick reputation (“buy food and guns in the same place!”) but probably the socially-imposed class divide keeping many latino and black people on a lower strata than many white people is going to make them show up on any blog involving a cheap place to shop.
Is it okay to post pictures of people on the internet? Well, it’s legal, but it’s tacky as hell, at least when the sole purpose is, y’know, making fun of them and not street photography.
I don’t like the site. I’m very troubled by the fact that there are websites out there that exsist for the sole purpose of mocking people. Another thing that bothers me is that those pictures were taken without consent of the person; it reminds me of the headless fattie pictures you see splashed across the screen during the news.
No matter what I’m wearing or what I look like when I go to Wal-Mart, or anywhere else, no one has the right to take my picture without my consent. I know I’m out in public, but I am not public property.
@Silly – I think it’s the reputation of Walmart that leads (MOST) people to start reading People of Walmart in the first place, and also why people assume these people are less well off…not their own snobbery. It’s true that perfectly upper-class people shop there out of convenience and for savings, but probably not in quite the same majority as people in the lower-middle-class and below (or people who are situationally broke, like college students), and it’s not
“funny” for people to think about that fact for long, imho.
I looked at people of Wal-mart once but didn’t stay long enough to notice the comments. It wasn’t very funny to me. I have never been one to laugh at peoples clothing. I might think something looks bad but I don’t laugh at it.
This doesn’t have a lot to do with People of Wal-mart but I remember seeing a 20/20 where the reporter asked a classroom of little kids if they would rather be fat or lose an arm. The kids overwhelmingly voted they would rather lose their arm. This was over ten years ago and it has stuck with me. I was shocked at that outcome.
@Charlotte – sadly, they do. Legally, if you’re in public, someone can take a picture of you, at least for art’s sake — and probably for this kind of stuff as well — and post it. Look up laws on street photography for the details and court cases.
@MEP:
THANK YOU X 1000. I knew plenty of people that had decent jobs and still would wear lime green Nascar jackets.
The only thing I worry about is how many people look at that site and say “lower class”. It’s not the website’s fault that makes people say OH THOSE PEOPLE ARE POOR, it’s public perceptions of who poor people are that does this. Not all poor people are Marlboro smokers who wear teeny tiny shorts and bring their goat to Wal Mart.
@MEP — I know rich and poor people alike who shop at Walmart, but the stereotype of Walmart shoppers (under/uneducated, low income, redneck, working class) is what’s being attacked on that website. I don’t know how much money those people make. I never assumed to. I was addressing the stereotype many people have of Walmart and the people who shop there.
And as far as my “bullshit comment”, I stand by the fact that poor people in this country — many of whom, like myself, have no choice but to shop at a store they hate — are treated like shit and now, thanks to People of Walmart, a lot of them are being openly mocked by complete strangers.
Thanks for the cheerleading. My point is that the “classism” some of these posters are whining about is more evident IN THEIR POSTS ON THIS THREAD than it is on the peopleofwalmart.com site, which is completely egalitarian in its lack of focus on any ethnicity, religion, size, class, income, etc.
I especially like this crap Faye is making up about a distinction between the middle-class people who don’t HAVE to shop at Wal-Mart but do it for “convenience and savings,” and the majority of Wal-Mart shoppers, who HAVE to shop there because they are so poor they don’t have a choice, and that’s how we know the people on peopleofwalmart.com are poor. And throwing out the “situationally broke” phrase is pretty awesome too.
One of the biggest drawbacks of the digital photography revolution and the trend toward smaller and more discrete cameras is this mean-spirited craze for ‘candid’ photographs. Flickr is awash with them; a user called Malingering is probably the best-known, but most of them seem to have a deeply unhealthy fixation with people who have the audacity to be fat at them in public. As CTJen and Trabbs Boy point out, this snarky, judgmental culture of people just going about their business (theirs, and no-one else’s) is a depressing commentary on the ubiquity of celeb mock sites and the associated idea that just being in public now somehow makes one public property.
As I said on the lnked BFB thread, there’s a definite classist and sizist aspect to this site, since poor people may not always be able to afford ‘the latest style’ and poor FAT people are likely to be even more restricted in their fashion choices. To those criticising folk wearing overly tight clothes, I would ask: when you’re a size 28 and the stores in your area only go up to a 24, you’ve no car to get to the mall and even if you could get a credit card to shop online they’re all too expensive, do you squeeze yourself into the 24 or go naked? Fat people do not, as a rule, wear tight clothing for the same reasons as skinny folk – it’s more about a lack of options. A lack of options they are then criticized for by the same people denying them clothing that fits. How thoroughly fucking wonderful.
And for what it’s worth, I’m not particularly poor, nor am I a ‘red-stater’, but I love Wal-Mart; it’s one of the few places that carry a full range of sizes and don’t charge the earth for them, and I don’t feel I have to justify my liberal credentials by cutting off my nose to spite my face and refusing to shop there. It’s cheap, it’s convenient, it carries a good selection. How is that an exclusively ‘working-class’ (read bad, uneducated, uncultured, illiberal) thing?
You’re not “addressing” the stereotype. You’re perpetuating it. You are saying that peopleofwalmart.com picks on “poor people.” Am I supposed to believe that a site that posts of a picture of a custom painted Lucky Charms car with thousand dollar rims on it is oppressing the poor with mockery? Am I supposed to assume that if someone is wearing tiny shorts, it’s because they can’t afford bigger ones? You are missing the bigger picture here, which is that every single person shown on the site has been photographed in the act of shopping and/or spending money. This site does not display pictures and encourage mockery of people begging, or sleeping on park benches, for God’s sake.
Oh MEP, why are you working so hard to defend a site that upholds cruel judgementalism? I’ve looked through that site (and comments on some of the pics), and two points matter here:
a) Even if those who run the site don’t do so out of racism, classism, etc., the fact is that the comments are FULL of racism, classism, etc. If I ran the site and this was the result, I would re-think the site itself. That PoW is still up indicates that the operators of the site have failed to reflect upon the (perhaps unintended) results of their actions–a forum for true hatefulness.
b) Even if it is “equal opportunity” mocking, is mocking people really how ethical, decent human beings spend their time? NO.
Annitspurple, I totally respect if anyone’s beef with the site is that it mocks people at all, for any reason. I won’t argue with you on that. And I agree with you that plenty of the comments are full of bad -isms — but I can’t get behind people lecturing about how awful the site is because of how it portrays “poor” or “low class” people, when the labels of “poor” or “low class” come directly from their own stereotypes.
Sorry so many comments, just waiting for these last few minutes of the work week to pass.
The thing that concerns me the most, actually, is what a high percentage of the pictures seem to be criticizing people just for wearing clothing “inappropriate” to their gender. I’m actually pretty impressed that a store we associate so much with conservative, rural America has so many gender-bending customers who don’t seem to care that people are staring at their attire.
My boyfriend’s mom showed me People of Walmart a few weeks ago. She thought it was funny but that site scared me. All I could do was think about all the times I’ve been in Walmart when my hair wasn’t very clean or I was wearing clothes that didn’t fit me properly…
I’ll just stick to something harmless, like Cake Wrecks.
I agree with MEP. It’s not like the site is laughing at homeless people.
If there’s really no expectation to look presentable anymore then my pants are going to be the first to come off.
I just stumbled across this site myself last night, and I mostly just found it sad and demoralizing.. certainly there are plenty of people on there who could make better choices about their choice of wording on their shirts, and should probably reconsider whether or not their cut-off sweatpants really are appropriate to wear in public.. but a better choice imo than ridiculing these people on the internet would be to just leave them be, or if they seriously have some piece of clothing riding up the point of indecency, to tell them quietly and politely that they might want to see it to (not much different than letting someone know their fly is down)… this site definitely is a major classism offender.. and fatism is certainly part of that. I’ll concede that if you’re in public you can’t expect privacy.. but you shouldn’t have to worry that because you didn’t put on your sunday best to go buy toilet paper that you’ll end up as someones internet joke.
“Equal-opportunity free-for-all mockery” is something I’ve never seen actually happen. It’s usually just something people say to justify their own brand of viciousness.
The fact that it’s pretty easy to pick out “themes” like the one Kai points out (failure to conform to gender expectations) is worth noting. Overwhelmingly, people are singled out for:
Being fat and showing skin
Being male and wearing pink or tight or clothing deemed somehow less than masculine.
Wearing “dated” clothing or hairstyles (mullets, for example).
And yes, there are a few other themes that crop up–categories of people deemed worthy of ridicule.
But the site’s called “People of Walmart.” And who*doesn’t* show up? That’s far more important, I think, in testing the theory that this is “equal opportunity.”
The FAQ says, “Funny looking people, crazy outfits, the creepiest of the creepy, the ugliest of the ugly, and the straight up fucked up people of the world will do.”
Their only sign of conscience is: “Absolutely NO pictures of someone mentally or physically handicapped will be added to the site…we aren’t complete dicks.”
From their “About Us”:
“Let’s face it; we all have seen the people who obviously don’t have mirrors and/or family and friends to lock them in a basement, and they all seem to congregate at Walmart. It’s not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels. Where else can one go to pick up underwear at 3 O’clock in the afternoon and spot the greatest mullet of all time paired with a mustard stained wife beater (which only accents the extreme amount of body hair) and camo pants that were actually used in Vietnam. And if you haven’t run into the 6’2” bull-dyke with a shaved head, rockin a wonder bra, flannel cutoff shirt, and jean shorts at 2 a.m. when you’re there to pick up frozen pizza, chips, and cookies, then you can get the fuck out right now.”
Yes. That’s clearly equal opportunity. No “isms” there. Nope.
Sorry for the extended quotage, but really, this site’s the intersectional nightmare.
Re: Shinobu’s comment, “I’ll just stick to something harmless, like Cake Wrecks.”
If commenters are suggesting that the problem is mocking other people, how is cake wrecks any better? A lot of the cakes seem to have been made by untrained bakers – it’s not offensive to mock their lack of education/training?
(I personally enjoy both sites, but just saying)
I don’t think the site’s using walmart out of a class issue, but more that walmart has become a place that people complain about and often claim to hate but still shop at. They have a bad reputation (as an employer, and as a place that homogenizes small towns and drives out smaller businesses) but are still popular. They’re everywhere and constantly expanding. Basically, walmart is just a large and therefore easy target. (Target like a bullseye, not the store!)
I’ve giggled over the People of Walmart site a few times, and have asked myself similar questions. Fat folk ARE disproportionately represented on the site. And on the rare occasions I have since been to a Walmart, I’ve worried: “I hope I don’t show up on that site.”
But while I am fat, I also make a point of being clean, well-groomed and dressed in clothes that fit and follow some basic style principles. It is possible to experiment and have fun with fashion without looking like you a) don’t have a clue, or b) don’t give a damn.
As for the ethics of candid photography, it is kind of evil, particularly when the purpose is to ridicule. On the other hand, nobody has the expectation of privacy in Walmart (or any other public place), so being laughed at on the Internet is not technically any different from being laughed at in the big-box aisles.
And let’s face it, “People of Target” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
A lot of the cakes seem to have been made by untrained bakers – it’s not offensive to mock their lack of education/training?
(I personally enjoy both sites, but just saying)
The Cake Wrecks bakers are supposed to know what they’re doing; they’re all paid professionals, or at least they get paid to decorate cakes. So when they expect people to pay for the horrors they perpetrate upon the cake-eating public, it’s okay to point and laugh (and occasionally shudder).
I’m not comfortable with People of Wal-Mart because the people in the photos aren’t presenting themselves as something they’re not. They’re just shopping. Shopping in very very ugly and ill-fitting clothes, sometimes, but just shopping. I’ve gone to Wal-Mart in whatever was clean with a zit on my chin because I had to, and I’m not only fat, but pregnant and living in sweatshirts. Does that mean that I’m going to appear on the site?
I fundamentally disapprove of Wal-Mart and think everyone should boycott them, so my first thought was sort of ‘anything that makes Wal-Mart look bad is fine with me.’
That said…. I hadn’t even thought of it as fat-bashing because it seems to be all about fashion-mockery/bizarre outfit mockery. I feel like they make fun of anyone dressed oddly- and that means skinny folk are decent targets too. I must admit I kinda love the blog.
Alright, I said it. I do feel a bit sheepish now, but I won’t lie about my intention to keep looking at it.
Me too lisbet. It’s equal opportunity snark, everyone and anyone is fair game.
I think that taking pictures of unsuspecting people then posting them on the web to make fun of them is inherently mean and offensive. There are undertones of classism, fatism, racism, and several dozen more -isms on that site.
On the other hand, it’s really fucking funny, and I don’t mind being an asshole sometimes. I say, don’t make excuses for your sometimes cruel and elitist sense of humor. Own your inner asshole.
I read somewhere that one of the best ways to practice body positivity is to stop snarking on other people’s bodies, because the more you snark on others, the more convinced you become that others are doing the same to you. I don’t think it’s too big a leap to extend that idea to sites like this.
This site is a nasty little product of someone else’s insecurities, and it serves to make other people as insecure. Ever been told that most people are so busy worrying about themselves that they’re not paying attention to you?That argument goes right out the window with a site like this, where you now have to wonder if your 2 am run for cat food will become public mockery fodder because you dared to leave your house in sweats.
This site plays to one of the crappiest of human behaviors–ridiculing others to make ourselves feel better, while at the same time confirming what we used to think were our silly insecurities. It’s hateful.